


there’s a place for us

by orphan_account



Category: The Creatures | Cow Chop RPF
Genre: Fake Chop, Fluff, M/M, Soft Boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-11-29 03:45:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18217757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: this fic does not currently have a summary. submit a summary via comment.





	there’s a place for us

**Author's Note:**

> you know when you’re sad about shit

Not long after they meet Aleks begins to dream about memories that don’t exist. Of nights spent back east under the big, black skies of Boston, the stars hidden by clouds and light pollution. Days doing nothing but driving around the nowhere Pennsylvania countryside, a thousand miles stretched between each tiny farmhouse. He dreams of James ten, fifteen years younger, baby-faced and grinning and itching to go somewhere different. Promising to take Aleks to a place where it’s always warm. 

He knows none of it happened, but most of the time it doesn’t matter. The way he knows James, right from the beginning, seems to grow from the inside out. Like he’s something that started in Aleks’ bones. 

They didn’t grow up together, but Aleks can picture those years so clearly, getting older, changing, fumbling with each other in the dark, the first press of an awkward adolescent kiss, that it all might as well be real. When they met, Aleks melted into him, drowned in the what-ifs of if they’d met sooner, what they could have done and been to each other. The people they could have been. 

Aleks has never considered himself religious or spiritual or any of that bullshit, but sometimes he looks at James, or they brush shoulders or hands or lips, and he wonders. Can’t help but wonder how many times they’ve met before. How many times they’d meet again. 

He hopes some of those times are kinder to them.

James shows up just before dawn. When sun is still hidden but close enough to push away the night, and the world is gray. He lets himself in with the key Aleks gave him, and somewhere along the way to the bedroom kicks off his sneakers and loses his hoodie and shorts. Mishka doesn’t even bark. 

He slips into Aleks’ bed, for the hundredth first time, his body warm and solid when he presses in close. 

There’s a difference Aleks can feel in the small amount of space between them. He knows what James feels like after a heist, after a night out, and this isn’t it. The way he’s warmed is from a bed. He smells like soap. His arms are already heavy when he wraps them around Aleks and pulls him closer, fits them together; no question, looking for no answer or permission, no doubt about what this is. James holds him, kisses the back of his neck, and settles in to go back to sleep because, Aleks knows, across town his own bed is too empty.

Because Aleks’ bed is empty too, when James isn’t there. Big and cold and unwelcoming. He never dreams as well. 

Aleks doesn’t know if they’ll ever name the thing between them. He doesn’t really care. It wouldn’t change anything to talk about it, to try to explain it to themselves or each other - it just is. Passes between them over time and distance and kisses, James’ open mouth against Aleks’, moving together in the dark, promising and promising and coming together. 

It doesn’t matter. James is there when Aleks falls asleep, and when he wakes up again, the sun is overhead, everything is orange and yellow and it’s always warm, he’s still there. Time stretches out in both directions, there’s no place Aleks ends and James begins. 

Someone stupider would call it love, but that’s much too small.


End file.
